Revered as a hero by his fans and disregarded as an egoistic
scoundrel by his critics,Henry
Miller lingers on in American literature as a presence for
which no common consensus seems to exist. As with certain
other artists who provoke a wide range of opinion, Miller
symbolized a force or personified a notion extending beyond
his own identity or creation. He belonged to a tradition in
literature that was idea- or content oriented rather than
one that was self-consciously poetic or merely well crafted.
In style and in vision, Miller was unabashedly rapturous,
entranced, ecstatic.

Writing in the first person, he drew from personal experience
to portray dramas that, when successful, addressed the larger
issues of our time: mystical experience and the question of
God; the contrast of the sacred and the profane and of meaning
and meaninglessness (the latter quality often portrayed in
scenes of exaggerated sexuality, for which he was later labeled
a pornographer); the liberating role of the artist; the dehumanizing
politics of the modern age; the spiritual value of marginal
characters and of social misfits (many of them the “homeless”
of his time); and meditations on the world-to-come. Miller
was a philosopher in the original (and not in the modern)
sense: one who lives his philosophy and whose philosophy
emerges from the reality called life.

It’s perhaps this philosophical view that stands at the
center of a fierce difference of opinion on the author. To
many “men of letters,” Miller’s worldview is unpalatable.
Like fellow iconoclast Marcel Duchamp, he offended the traditionalists
and the avant-garde (a nifty accomplishment) by refusing
to accept a politically correct path, always preferring to
go his own way.

Speaking
of his own place in literature, Frank Harris (a client of
the senior Miller’s tailor shop) once wrote:

There are two main traditions of English
writing: the one of perfect liberty, that of Chaucer and Shakespeare,
completely outspoken, with a certain liking for lascivious
details and witty smut, a man’s speech; the other emasculated
more and more by Puritanism and since the French Revolution,
gelded to the tamest propriety; for that upheaval brought
the illiterate middle class to power and insured the domination
of girl readers. Under Victoria, English prose literally became
half childish, as in stories of “Little Mary,” or at least
provincial, as anyone may see who comes to consider the influence
of Dickens, Thackeray and Reade in the world with the influence
of Balzac, Flaubert and Zola.

All my life I have rebelled against this old maid’s canon
of deportment, and my revolt has grown stronger with advancing
years….

Although he epitomizes many other things as well, Miller clearly
belongs to this tradition of “perfect liberty.”

In contrast to Miller’s liberation, Anaïs Nin pursued
a style that approached the darker issues only to skirt about
them with an abstract, denatured, Apollonian resolve. To integrate
the “instincts” (as she liked to call them) into consciousness
became a lifelong pursuit; one in which she was assisted by
none other than Henry Miller.

In examining Miller’s correspondence with his fellow
writer, patron, and lover, we are privy to previously unpublished
disclosures of intimacy and compassion that occasionally border
on the electric. When the letters are somewhat less electric,
however, they often fail to elicit the interest of the general
reader or even that of the Miller- or Nin aficionado.

It’s possible that the fault lies with editor Gunther
Stuhlmann, who chose to exclude passages of general interest,
such as (in his own words): “lengthy discussions of Dostoyevsky,
Proust, Joyce, D.H. Lawrence; detailed critiques of one another’s
work-in-progress; ruminations on films, books, and so on,
often encased in letters of twenty or more typed pages.” Although
one can understand the problem concerning the limitations
of space, the decision to “eliminate material peripheral to
the personal story” leaves the literary palate teased yet
unsatiated.

By focusing on the personal concerns and events of their
lives, the book fails to pay tribute to the larger issues
that propelled Miller to greatness and that profoundly concerned
each author. Perhaps, there was a fear that Miller’s superior
grasp of such issues and his ability to more imaginatively
respond to them would have severely overshadowed Nin’s generally
less interesting contributions. Heralded by the emerging Women’s
Movement and revered by a generation of introspective journal
scribblers, her literary importance remains an inflated one,
while Miller still awaits his proper canonization in modern
literature.

One hopes that such juicier ruminations on literature,
film, and art will one day see the “light of print” and help
to place each author in better perspective. Meanwhile, A
Literate Passion occasionally sparks, but never quite
ignites, the literary passions of the reader.